Continuing my summer theme of doing things I normally wouldn't ever do, I took up some friends on an offer to go to horse racing with the intent to lose money and get stinking drunk in public. Naturally, I was there merely to say 'hi' and then go off to take pictures. Previously, I had no real interest in horses or in this spectacle of people converting hard-earned money (or pension cheques) into little tiny pieces of paper they would clutch in their hands until the blur of beasts and small people crossed the muddy finish line. But after this afternoon of actually viewing it in person -- as opposed to watching The Black Stallion or Sea Biscuit again (both fine movies) -- I declare the experience fun and worth doing again.

Equipment used that afternoon:

• Canon EF 100-400mm IS USM L telephoto lens
• Carl Zeiss Flektogon 20mm f/2.8 ultra-wide lens
• and my Canon 30D body

Challenges
As for taking pictures of the race, I admit to having struggled with it. Here were the conditions:

• bright sunlight
• fast moving subjects
• subjects ranging from far away to close
• need to isolate subjects from background
• glittery uniforms / high contrast uniforms
• dramatic differences in the ambient between shade and un-shaded background

Oops. Bring that ND filter
For subjects in bright sunlight you normally would use a neutral density (ND) filter. The sun strikes high contrast, reflective materials such as glittery uniforms, any patches of white like railings and signs, and then reduces it to zero-data unless you compensate.

An ND screw on filter would reduce clipping in highlights (extreme bright parts of your image) at the cost of exposure. The result would be a more balanced picture. Unfortunately, I don't own one in the 77mm thread which is what my Canon EF IS USM 100-400mm L telephoto requires. Note to self: invest in one. In my photos of the day you'll see my best attempts to compensate by bringing down the highlights in Lightroom. However, by not doing this in-camera I lost any information that was peaked right out of the histogram. Result: FAIL.

High Shutter speed for capturing movement.
For the fast-moving subjects you will naturally want to raise your shutter speed. How much you raise it depends on how much you want to 'freeze the action'. I found myself going back and forth around 1/400th to 1/1000th throughout the day trying to get that 'mud flying, horse legs still' look.

Here is a good basic introduction to shutter speed on Canon cameras >>

From RAW to JPEG
When the difference between a mediocre shot and a good shot can be affected by a rider having a certain expression or the position of a horse's legs you want to capture as many frames as possible in a burst. I shoot RAW almost always but the much higher amount of data fills up my buffer very quickly, so for the action shots I reverted to Large-size JPEG. The size of the image (3504 x 2336 pixels) remains the same but does not keep as much exposure information. So I am sacrificing my ability to work with the image later in favour of capturing more frames.

Adjusting the AF - autofocus
My 100-400L also has Canon's excellent USM (ultra sonic motor) focus which on this lens is very fast indeed -- IF one is smart with telling the 30D's computer-brain what it needs to focus on. Out of the box, most DSLRs have focus points all over the map. In this situation where you want to make the creative decision to focus on one subject over another, it's best that you put the focus point on center-point. Another change I made was to change the AF-function from the shutter button to the * button (thumb activated). What this does is allow you to burn off frames with the shutter button without telling the camera to change focus again -- it only does this when you press the * button. Even with all that auto-power, I'm still grateful that the 100-400 allows you to manually adjust the focus in the middle of the action (FTM), which I did out of habit.

My 100-400L also has image stabilization but IS has no use whatsoever when the subject is moving irregularly so it went off to save battery usage.

I noticed another shooter with a monopod attached to his telephoto. I didn't really see the utility in one when your shutter speed should be high enough you can hand-hold the shot. Maybe it was just a nice platform for panning? Possibly. In any case I think I did an adequate job in freezing the action.

Isolating the subject
At Hastings Park there are times when the jumble of poles, railings, and advertising interrupts the composition. Additionally, there are situations when you want to isolate one or two riders away from the field. For that you need shallow depth of field (DOF). Normally this threatens to blow out your picture in bright sunlight. However, because you are already raising your shutter speed quite high, you don't have to worry about that. Indeed, there are times when I had to raise the ISO up above 400 to bring the exposure up to a decent level. In most of my shots I chose to isolate a leading subject but in one shot I chose to instead isolate the lagging rider who had no chance of winning the race. It's an idea I'll try to explore the next time I try it.

Using the TV priority
I am 90% a manual shooter because most of my shooting these days is posed portrait style where I want maximum control over exposure and DOF. But in action photography where the exposure might vary dramatically you can instead rely on your camera's remarkable computer-brain to make the quick adjustments for you. Using shutter-priority on your camera tells the camera that you want the best exposure for the shutter-speed that you pick. The camera will then open or close the aperture to try and match it. My greatest issue when using TV was that it could not compensate when there suddenly was a change in the ambient lighting, for example when shooting from shade to un-shaded. When the computer can only adjust aperture, at times there just wasn't any room it go to. If only the 30D had auto-ISO!

Not just horses, people
One last thing I enjoyed a lot of was the atmosphere of the crowd and the people. On the website for Hastings Park it warns you not to take pictures of the guests -- I assume because not a lot of people want to be known as gamblers, so at first I only took pictures of the mariachi band and of course the trainers and jockeys who must be free game. Earlier on I had an extended conversation with an old-timer who was not hopeful for the future of horse-racing. Too many people were playing X-Box and even the serious bettors were doing it by close-circuit television or by the Internet. But this afternoon there were multitudes of families, young people stuffing their faces with the concession-food (which was surprisingly all right -- yes I'm directing that comment at you Nat Bailey stadium), drinks aplenty and a festive atmosphere. Maybe it was because of the long weekend but I would go again.